### ODT Online Wed, 20 Jan 2010DCC begins budgeting process
By David Loughrey
Dunedin city councillors will today open the city’s accounts, beginning what is bound to be a contentious process of setting both the budget, and the annual rates increase. But day one of that process – its political ramifications more acute in an election year – will be done away from the public eye.Read more

Now, the fairytale has overheated: “With only seven of the planned 19 peaks completed and the artificial glaciers only partially frozen….”

### theonion.com January 14, 2010Dubai Debt Crisis Halts Building Of World’s Largest Indoor Mountain Range
DUBAI—Representatives from the emirate of Dubai announced with disappointment this week that its recent debt crisis has forced developers to halt construction on the city’s long-planned 22-mile-long indoor mountain range. The culmination of a decade’s worth of ambitious and expensive building projects, Dubai’s estimated $100 billion debt officially brought work on the artificial mountain range to a stop on Tuesday.
“This is a very sad day for the emirate of Dubai,” Crown Prince Hamdan bin Mohammed al-Maktoum told reporters at a press conference held inside the gold-plated anti-gravity chamber in his palace.
“Although I believe it is the basic right of all who visit us to be able to scale to the top of a 15,000-foot-tall manmade snowcap, these tough economic times have made it an impossibility. Never before has our proud municipality faced such a grave crisis.”Read more